


Bronze: Japan

by SashinaLash



Series: Wordplay Fic Challenge 2020 [2]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Bedtime Stories, Gen, Harry in Japan, Japanese things, Louis in Japan, M/M, Sort Of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:26:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25239976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SashinaLash/pseuds/SashinaLash
Summary: Harry discovers mirrors in Kyoto.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson
Series: Wordplay Fic Challenge 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1818505
Comments: 12
Kudos: 18
Collections: Prompt 2.4: Bronze





	Bronze: Japan

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of a Wordplay prompt challenge for the prompt "bronze". To read the amazing fics that were written by the others on this prompt, [click here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/bronze), and to see all fics written as part of the challenge (including years 1-3), [click here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/wordplay_fic_challenge/works). You can also find the masterpost for this year’s challenge [here](https://wordplayfics.tumblr.com/post/622306139518926848/wordplay-2020-every-week-for-five-weeks-a-prompt).
> 
> I'm [SashinaLash](https://sashinalash.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr.

A last day in Kyoto.

[A day of silence and memories] Harry’s been in the museum most of the day. The usual museum fatigue, absent. The ache of his soles inside his loafers, he cannot feel it. Tightness across the shoulders, nonexistent. Almost ringless hands loose at his sides, phone and wallet in his pocket undisturbed. Every object seemingly more intriguing, more beautiful, more calming, than the previous. Even the _yōkai_ , the monsters, the shape-shifters—exquisite in their brushstrokes and shadows. An inky dread that, for now, can be left in these glass cases.

**_Bronze mirror with crane decoration, c.1120, Kyoto. Retrieved from shrine,_ ** **_Haguro-san, 1927._ **

_This bronze mirror was found in the 'mirror-pool' at the shrine on Mount Haguro, where it was thrown, along with hundreds of other mirrors, as an offering. The ‘mirror’ side is undecorated and was polished to create a reflective surface, while the back is typical with its cast decoration of natural motifs: in this case cranes and pine fronds._

_In Haien period Japan, mirrors were associated with the sun-goddess Amaterasu, ancestress of the Japanese emperors, because of their ability to reflect light. The mirror of Amaterasu, within the holy shrine in Ise, was given to her grandson to after he descended from heaven to rule over Japan. It was supposed to give him and his successors perpetual access to the divine sun._

Harry considers the bronze disc, the once highly-polished mirror side now dulled from however long under dark shrine-hidden water, no longer fulfilling its original purpose. What’s its point now, laundered, suspended in a climate-controlled glass case? And its original purpose: what was that anyway? To serve the vanity of ancient courtesans to in the court in Kyoto? To make the poets pretty enough? Or as a down-payment for re-birth as something new? Something better?

Refined, sophisticated, aestheticised, ritualised.

A reverence for poetry and art. Beauty as a cult.

Connoisseurship itself as the art.

Tossed into a pool, but metal. Nothing to break. Modern mirrors are covered to ward off evil spirits.

Harry steps around to the opposite side of the cabinet, studies the back of the mirror.

_The cast reverse features a pair of dancing cranes carrying delicate pine fronds, the line of their necks matching the curvature of the circular mirror. Cranes not only had a reputation for longevity—the Japanese believed that they lived for a thousand years—but because these birds mate for life, they are symbols of marital fidelity._

It’s supposed to be a simple pattern, achievable in a rudimentary cast made of stuck-together sand. Yet a saucer-sized mirror mould is four months’ work alone. A painstaking studio task, undertaken alone. The reductive process somehow appeals: everything is there until it is removed. A fullness, a completeness, the final art hidden within the grains of sand.

Everything is already there, within you.

The cranes— _tanchozuru_ _—ready to dance._

*

A vertical sliver of gentle dusk slices the white gallery walls. Harry inhales the space; fingers softly pressing on his thighs, feet grounded, sated. Eye contact with the guard who points at her wristwatch.

He carries a little of the magic home: three folios and—on recommendation of the shop girl—a slim paperback of _The Tale of Genji_ in a knotted _furoshiki_ bag. Always a sucker for a museum shop.

Pink Gucci loafers on granitic shingle. He senses the sharp crunch through the leather; they need re-soling. He’ll do it, too. Sick of new everything on tap. Always shiny. Brand spanking new or holy vintage; nothing in between. The Japanese would never. The early moon glints off the granite sparkles by his toes. He spins the fabric knot over his left fist; feels safe, strong. Carrying myths in his own hands.

***

[Home] Back in the ryokan, the largest of the books rests on Harry’s raised knees. His back is against the wall; two pillows for comfort. No obvious place to start, he cracks the book at a random spot.

_Even after glass mirrors became widespread in Japan, bronze mirrors with their decorative backs were continued to be produced as sacred items: gold plated, polished and re-polished by professional mirror metalsmiths. // A final step is to smooth and buff the mirror's surface with charcoal from the bigleaf magnolia. In the past, the process known as hontogi involved the metalsmith rubbing mercury onto the mirror. Today, the surface is rubbed instead with nickel or a nickel amalgam._

The beauty of prescription: do these things, in this specific order, and these other things will happen. Polish correctly, using the right charcoal (so dark, so black, so dirty), and not only will your reflection be clearer, but the gods will surely be happier.

Sleep in the dirt; be blessed; be re-born.

The museum has cleansed him again.

*

[Bedtime stories and lullabies] A soft glow from a paper lantern signals bedtime.

Tonight: Excerpts for children of _Genji monogatari_ _—The Tale of Genji_ —by Murasaki Shikibu. Possibly the world’s first novel, written in the early eleventh century. By a woman. Right up Harry’s alley.

Words across pillows speaking of travel, of distance. Harry turned this into the tenderest of arts long ago. An intimate, quiet and glitterless stage. Fake tales of flannelette, Louis once called them. Not fair really, but cosy, and clever.

_Before setting off for a long absence, Genji takes a mirror, recites into it a passionate love poem and then gives it to his beloved - so that, holding the mirror once he is gone, his lover will be able to hold both his message of love and, within its polished surface, the image of Genji himself._

Harry holds the book close to his chest. This thing, it’s not even beautiful. The illustrations are a bit off, certainly not gallery-worthy.

But to consider a love letter—words of longing—captured within the lustrous bronze!

This static, metallic disc, providing access to the sun!

And capturing the image of a lover, and the lover’s words!

To trace with fingertips the pair of elegant birds in their eternal dance!

The words have evaporated from his breath.

The dulled bronze. _No surface all feeling_.

He places the book on the small neat stack beside him.

The room brings sleep-silence again.

Harry dreams of objects lost, objects given away.

***

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone who gave such lovely feedback after my [first Wordplay fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25097863/), and especially to my little band of Tumblr cheerleaders.
> 
> Here's a [fic post](https://sashinalash.tumblr.com/post/623541943558963200/wordplay-fic-challenge-2020-sashinalash-week) on Tumblr you can reblog if you enjoyed reading. Thank you!


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